Marron flew home after spending the rest of the day with Trunks. She couldn't stop staring at the bracelet that Trunks gave her. Minutes later she arrived to her home at the KAME house. She landed and went inside. Roshi and Krillin were watching TV but she wasn't sure where her mother was. She went up stairs to her room and lied down onto her bed. She began to think about Trunks and how much she loved him. She wondered what life would be like without him. She couldn't imagine it. It would be horrible. She quickly disregarded the thought and moved on to other, happier thoughts. As she was thinking she became tired and drowsy. Moments later she was engulfed in wave of dreams. As she was sleeping, the bracelet on her wrist began to glow.
Marron awoke when a hurried patter of footsteps thundered across the floor outside her room. Then she heard the shouts. They were loud, unintelligible; shouts of hurry. She opened her eyes and saw the shadows moving across the light beneath the door. The moon still shone out her window.
"Move it, Krillin! Scatter, Goten let's go!"
Now that was Piccolo.
"Let's go! Tien, Okara, Ion and Camino have already gone! ––No time, leave it!"
Marron slid silently from beneath the covers and tiptoed across the carpeted floor to the door. She pressed her ear up against the smooth wood and listened carefully.
First she heard the front door slam and the house fell silent––all except the distant sounds of a TV somewhere close.
Marron opened the door and walked out into the hall. It took her eyes a moment to adjust to the light, and she held her hand out in front of her at first. "Guys?" she called, and peered each direction through squinted eyes.
No one answered.
As her sight improved she moved towards the stairs and then down them. The hurried tones of the TV set became louder and more distinct. Now she could make out a reporters voice, only this was no average report. Instead of the slick and sultry sounds of the ten o'clock anchors, this woman was, as near as Marron could tell, in hysterics.
"––from the air...thousands dead...city in chaos..."
Marron's eyes widened and she hurriedly tiptoed through the kitchen and into the sitting room where the TV illuminated the dark room and the two others occupying it.
"Hey there Marron," Bulma said. Yamcha was sleeping on the couch wrapped in bandages.
"What's happening?" she asked, ignoring her completely. "What's this all about?"
Bulma grabbed up the remote and turned the volume up a few notches.
"For those of you just joining us, as you can see behind me the destruction is the greatest ever imposed on a modern city. The attacker appeared in the sky and rained fire down on defenseless civilians for several minutes before disappearing."
The camera zoomed out to show the city from a chopper's view. It looked like something out of an Armageddon movie, the night sky turned to orange by the flames that crawled up sky scrapers and swirled around entire city blocks. Even from above the wreckage was plain as day. Many structures had toppled into the streets, and some even collapsed on residential areas where no doubt hundreds of sleeping people had been crushed by the many thousands of tons of concrete.
"I...can't describe what's just happened to you viewers. There simply...aren't words," the reporter on the scene mumbled into the microphone. Her black hair was in disarray and her glasses were cracked in the right lens.
"Tell us what you can," the slightly more composed anchor on the other half of the screen said. "Anything. What did this creature look like?"
The reporter looked at the ground a moment and then back to the camera. Her stare sent chills up Marron's spine.
"It's eyes––they were so...horri––"
Immediately the reporter's words broke off and morphed into a scream of horror. Marron leaned in closer and, after the reporter ducked and cleared the view, saw small energy balls shooting upward from an unseen location in the distance. The noise they made was a low electric hum. The cluster of beams rose and rose until they were off the screen, then slowly lost momentum, turned over, and then rained down.
The screen went white. Bulma screamed.
Marron's stomach immediately went numb. Soon nearly everyone in that city would be baked alive or obliterated by the blasts. Tears stung in her eyes.
"I don't understand this. Yesterday everything was fine and peaceful. Now the Earth is total chaos." Marron thought to herself. She looked over to Bulma. Bulma's hair was cut shorter than what it was the day before. She was even wearing a blue jacket that had the capsule corp. patch on the left shoulder. "What is going on?" She asked. "Who is doing this and why all of a sudden is the Earth under siege?" Bulma looked at her with a confused look.
"What do you mean?" It's been like this for the past twenty-four years. Cell has taken over Earth."
"Cell? You mean the green monster that Gohan beat and had to absorb my mother to become stronger?" Bulma was even more confused. Marron was about half right.
"Gohan never beat Cell. Cell killed Gohan."
"This isn't right. Cell has been dead for years. Gohan and Videl have a kid named Pan. Trunks and I are together. You and Vegeta have a daughter named Bra, who is engaged to Scatter. Everything is peaceful. This is like a bad nightmare."
"What are you talking about? This is real as real can be. I wish it were different." Bulma thought that Marron had gone off the deep end. She hadn't the foggiest idea what Marron was talking about. Gohan never met anyone by the name of Videl nor did they have a kid. And surely she didn't have a daughter and Marron and Trunks never got together. The Earth hasn't been at peace for a long time.
